disrupting myself, or the jump from Product Marketing to Product Management

Product Management Day 63: So we built this for nothing?

In the middle of a sprint, you suddenly learn that something being built is possibly irrelevant.

Poor planning? Maybe – in this case it was a poor understanding of the use cases, and also not being able to piece together the impact of new information on the fly (if not I could have stopped development of the ticket earlier).

Learning points:

get as close as possible to understanding how users work (or should work) : processes, actual usage

constantly try to anticipate and ask how new developments will impact the sprint and overall product (this is harder to quantify, especially if you may not have a complete grasp of the code base)

don’t just evaluate tickets in context of the sprint (or worse, just listen and take requirements) without considering the bigger picture

Above all, move on, be positive. This happens, and not just in software development. Just that we as consumers often don’t see it.

I jumped from Product Marketing to Product Management at Zalora recently. These posts represent a journal of my learnings and reflections. Feel free to connect on Twitter @wasabigeek.